Anna Wessels Williams (1863 - 1954)

Infectious disease pioneer and public health advocate In 1887 (age 24), Anna Williams's sister Millie became very ill during childbirth and, partly due to the inexperience of the person caring for her, lost her baby and almost died. Anna Williams decided that she would train as a physician to give herself more control in such terrible situations.

Known for
Isolated a strain of the diptheria bacillus that was used to develop an antitoxin for diphtheria

Taught at Women's Medical College of the NY Infirmary, with Mary Putnam Jacobi and Emily Blackwell the and later worked on public policy issues with Emily Barringer

Worked as a bacteriologist at the first municipal diagnostic laboratory in the United States. Worked closely with the director, William H. Park, M.D., including research and also writing of an influential textbook and one of the first general-reader books on the topic: Pathogenic Micro-organisms Including Bacteria and Protozoa: A Practical Manual for Students, Physicians and Health Officers (1905) and Who’s Who among the Microbes (1929)

First woman to be elected chair of the laboratory section of the American Public Health Association

Find more
NIH site

Wikipedia Anna Wessels Williams, MD: Infectious Disease Pioneer and Public Health Advocate" (PDF). American Association of Immunologists (AAI). Retrieved 28 July 2018.

In Rachel Swaby's Headstrong: 52 Women Who Changed Science-and the World (2015)